Image Hotspot Problems

Image mapping or ‘hotspot’ activities typically require learners to identify a region or point in an image that is provided to them by clicking or tapping the image, or selecting their answer with a tool such as a pin or area selector (⬚). 

Image hotspot activities are extremely useful for identifying components of a visual model, such as anatomical diagrams:

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The downside of this is that image hotspot activities are fundamentally inaccessible without a great deal of care being taken during the construction of the activity and the tool itself, due to the visual nature of the activity. In order for an image mapping activity to be accessible, multiple distractor regions with descriptive alternative text would need to be provided, essentially turning the activity into a multiple choice question.

This raises issues with the hotspot activity type for assessment. There is not a significant established standard for this kind of assessed activity. There are standard informational image map guidelines, but these do not take an assessment’s inherent need to obscure what can be clicked into account. It’s likely this is why other platforms with hotspot activities simply write them off as just inaccessible, which makes them a “trap” for unwary educators who shouldn’t actually use them, but are still offered the option.

I do not believe it is impossible to build an accessible assessed hotspot activity, but it will require rigorous accessibility testing and careful design.

There’s a fantastic writeup about H5P activities and accessibility that is worth reviewing for this specific activity’s requirements, as these are effectively the same requirements our own tool needs to meet.